Getting the Most from Twitter During Trade Shows

Conferences are a great opportunity to meet people, make business deals and have fun. But there is an opportunity for social media, as well. Making the most of the networks you use can be a great way to grow your following and get some targeted engagement on your account.

Attached to every conference is a hashtag—or two or three—which are used for promotion on Twitter. The tags are used by people who attend, want to attend, or generally are interested in the show. A targeted “follow me” campaign is a good way to acquire targeted followers.

It sounds simple because it is. Basically, just set up a search on Twitter for the hashtag(s) and follow along. The closer the show, the more people will start using the hashtags. The peak of hashtag use will take place during the show.

You can also use this as a good way to set up meetings, discuss the show and start building some highly targeted topical engagement. Twitter interaction also makes for a good follow-up conversation post-show.

The Phoenix Forum, taking place March 31 through April 3, is the next adult industry trade show. Most of the Twitter activity around the conference is happening among attendees, people who plan to attend and past attendees. The two hashtags in use are ThePhoenixForum and PhoenixForum.

I suggest following anyone who is using the hashtags, retweeting them, or favoriting them. I also suggest using hashtags in your tweets. “Lurkers”—people not using the tags but watching those who are—may follow you based on your tweets.

Live-tweeting—posting up-to-the-minute info in real-time—from the show easily can be accomplished using your phone. If you post photos with your tweets, make sure to tag people in them (using “@[username]”). Again, this helps you to participate robustly in the hashtagged conversation, indicating your account is relevant to the issue for which the hashtag arose.

If you don’t have time to manage your social media accounts yourself—or don’t have someone like me doing it for you—then you can use programs like Best Social Plan to set up the following campaign that automatically will follow people using that hashtag. Keep in mind no automated program can engage with other social media users or tweet for you without your input. Most simply follow people using the hashtag so you don’t have to do it yourself. A program like this is easy to use and a good solution if you don’t live on Twitter as I do.

Surprisingly, engaging with business-to-business trade show hashtags can get you more new followers than fan shows. A big part of the reason is that most of the people using the tag are truly relevant. Tags associated with fan shows often attract mostly bots and humans who will engage with anything about porn. The majority of B2B show tags users are industry “tweeps” (people who use Twitter) and likely are the people you want to reach.